Writing Goals for 2026 — Same as 2025, Really
About this time a year ago, I was setting my goals for 2025, and I was pretty sure what I was going to achieve in the following twelve months. After finally finishing the first draft of The Empire of Nandesh, the second novel of my octology, in the dying...
2025 in Review
These are the poems I had published during 2025.Some quick links to them: "River of Naming" in Orion's Belt; "Lesser Zodiacs" in Merganser Magazine, and (again) "In the Sloth Tunnels, at a Time of War" in Small Wonders are all freely available online a......
One last poem published for 2025
I think I've had more poems published this year than I got around to posting about. (Subscribe to my newsletter and/or follow me on Bluesky to make sure you don't miss anything!) I'll take a look back at the full year and should be putting up a review ......
Decorating the White Room
Most scenes in a story consist of people having a conversation, in one way or another. Or fighting, of course, which is bizarrely similar. Even if there’s only one character in the scene, the chances are they’re thinking — and that’s communication of a kind. This is fine, but...
The Shape of a Legend & Wyrmbane in Quest — 22 Stories of the Hero’s Journey
It’s exciting to have any story published, but I’m especially looking forward to the release, on 21st September, of Quest — 22 Stories of the Hero’s Journey. An anthology published by Fantasy-Writers.org, which I’ve been a member of since 2004, it features two of my stories among the twenty-two....
Cage Match: AutoCrit vs. ProWritingAid Chapter Analysis
(Beth Turnage Blog) Analysis of Two Industry Giants (And a Nod to Hand Analysis) What happens when you pit two of the biggest names in AI manuscript analysis against each other? I put Chapter 4 of my manuscript through both AutoCrit and ProWritingAid to see how they’d evaluate the...
Shocking Results From AI Manuscript Analysis : AutoCrit Vs ProWriting Aid
(Beth Turnage Blog) The Rejections That Started an AI Experiment After receiving some puzzling rejections for my manuscript Hanging By A Thread—a neo-noir thriller with MM romantic suspense elements—I found myself genuinely confused. As someone who’s been ghostwriting for 11 years and has helped clients achieve numerous bestsellers, I...
Interview With The Ghostwriter
(Beth Turnage Blog) I’m typing this from my bed at 2 a.m. with a deadline looming. By morning, I’ll have turned someone else’s rough idea into 5,000 words of polished prose they’ll publish under their name. And that’s exactly how I want it. For many, ghostwriters are shadowy figures...
Update: The Scribe’s Progress (Or Lack Thereof)
The scribe is burning through the “trash that pays the mortgage.” This is good because, this, theoretically will leave her more time to work on my story. But I’m dismayed that she’s not writing about me. (Whatever happened to finishing what you start, Scribe?) Scribe: Look, if you weren’t...
Is The California AI Fair Use’ Ruling A New Bright Line?
(Beth Turnage Blog) We Now Have a Legal Definition A federal judge in California has handed down a ruling that reshapes our understanding of AI and writing. In Bartz v. Anthropic, Judge William Alsup declared that Anthropic’s use of copyrighted books to train its AI model, Claude, was “fair...